The best things are free, discounted or stolen

My wife and I spent about $700 dollars for our wedding. Jealous, fellas? Ladies? Although, FYI, the ceremony may have been slightly illegal, but the document is binding! We got married in a local park. I went down to the city's parks office to obtain permission for the ceremony, I tried to be cool about it. I went up to the counter and made my request. We had a particular area of the park in mind. The clerk asked me if I meant the conservatory. The conservatory is a building and probably where most couples want their wedding if they're choosing this park. We didn't want the conservatory. We wanted an area around an archway inscribed with the words "The Poet's Garden" cuz we were all deep and brooding at 20 and 21 years of age. That's right, I got married before I could buy alcohol. I knew what I wanted. But they didn't have a form all ready and a fee pre-determined for couples who wanted to use The Poet's Garden. So we left the office and as we drove away, we decided: fuck 'em! If they won't take our money, we're gonna squat there!

So we called a family friend who had access to a bunch of chairs and did a blitzkrieg wedding. We arrived on scene the day we wanted and set up the wedding ourselves with help from family. We did the Cosby strategy. We got in, did our thing and left before they could stop us!

I wonder what anyone would've done. Some strangers walked past on the trails through the park. If they said or did anything, it didn't affect us. Even if a cop had driven by, he wouldn't know offhand if we'd had permission or not. Even if the Chancellor of Parks & Recreation (or whatever the title is) had strolled past and he knew for a fact that no weddings were on their calendar for today, what would that person have done? Kicked us out in the middle of our vows? Written us a citation for our ninja-esque nuptials?

We had a family-friend marry us in a non-denominational ceremony. My family's Jewish, her family's half-Catholic and half-Protestant, there was no way to please everybody. The stated religion of our officiant friend was Paganism, too, which was fun for the religious kooks.

My wife walked out, not to the Mendelssohn wedding march or Brahms' 1st Symphony, but to the song "Love" from Disney's Robin Hood. She asked me if I minded if, instead of fancy high heels, she wore a pair of Converses under her dress and I said sure! Fantastic idea. Our colors were pale pink and silver.

Her real mother (a career alcoholic) decided to relapse that day instead of sharing the happiest moment of our lives with us. I don't have a joke for that, but I wanted everyone to know about it. At least her dad cheerfully brought the evil step-mother of folklore (his long-time girlfriend).

But we had a blast. We looked back on our shoestring budgeted ceremony with pride. Anything that went sour was somebody else's decisions, not ours. We kicked our wedding's ass and had all the stuff we wanted. We won! We never regretted our decision even for a day. Even if, technically, the ceremony may have been some kind of misdemeanor. What can I say? We were a couple of badass punk hopeless romantics.